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We meet at the café of the Schaubühne theatre in Berlin, where, just an hour later, he is set to perform in the monodrama Who Killed My Father. He already performed it the previous evening, having created it based on his own novel together with the renowned theatre director Thomas Ostermeier. Dressed in a cotton t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers, he doesn’t stand out at all from the city’s other thirtysomethings, yet he is an image of exceptionally courteous kindness. We could record the interview in the theatre,” he offers, but I decline, explaining that I’m nervous and wouldn’t be able to smoke inside. “Ah, why would you be nervous around me!” he smiles. I think, and maybe even say aloud, that it’s not every day that I get to have a conversation with someone who has had such a profound influence on my own writing. He surely understands what kind of nervousness this involves, especially given the lines of fans, who, even after his theatre performance, waited with copies of his book for his autograph and the chance to exchange a few words with him. Édouard Louis became such a literary star with his debut novel The End of Eddy (published in France in 2014) that his involvement in literature, theatre, activism, and other public spheres is impossible to overlook or ignore, even if you’re not someone to whom his work speaks directly. Such a breakthrough is never a given, but in his case, the chances of ascending to the global literary and intellectual elite (among his closest friends, for example, are the French philosophers Geoffroy de Lagasnerie and Didier Eribon) were close to zero. In his debut, he described the effort needed to escape the lower working class, where there was nothing in abundance but homophobia and chauvinism. His first publishers rejected him, saying that “such poverty doesn’t exist in France”. We are invisible, Édouard thought to himself. The fact that he became visible—something that coincided with the process of completely transforming himself—does not testify to the fact that anyone can succeed if they try hard enough, as the prevailing ideology tries to remind us daily. “We know how many people we saw growing up who worked hard, who were intelligent, but still got nowhere and received no access to anything because they were from the working class,” he emphasises. He uses his own visibility to tell all those stories that the dominant class claims “do not exist” and to enter spaces “where his body is not supposed to be”. Even our meeting was such a case, it occurs to me. Had he faced what “society had previously prepared” for him, or if I may, what it had prepared for me, neither of us would be sitting at a theatre café on a beautiful day in May in one of the world’s metropolises, talking  about art and politics. We’d more likely be living in our hometowns, hunched over a conveyor belt, either one in a factory or in a convenience store.

Édouard Louis. Photo: author’s personal archive.

I want to congratulate you on yesterday’s performance in Who Killed My Father, as it was very powerful and moving. Watching you made me reflect on how intensely vulnerable this situation must be for you. Alone on stage, not only with your work but also with your life, your body, exposed to others.

Yes… it’s quite challenging. This isn’t my usual work. I usually spend my days in my kitchen, writing, with no contact with other people. But the difficulty of this work is also part of its advantage. The price I pay for direct confrontation is precisely the means and the opportunity for direct contact that I’m looking for. I always say that people already know the world they live in. For centuries, the purpose of literature was to teach about the world. Victor Hugo, Émile Zola, Jean-Paul Sartre, even William Faulkner revealed worlds that people didn’t know because they had no access to them. Today, with the circulation of information, the internet, and social media, information is more or less everywhere. We all know that we live in a racist world, we all know we live in a world at war, we all know we live in a classist society. So maybe the role of art has changed. Maybe it’s now about confronting people with what they already know but don’t want to acknowledge. The stage is a privileged space where you can really confront people. They are somehow trapped in this room; it’s hard to escape from it. (He smiles) Theatre is therefore an artistic and political technology of confrontation, which is why I love it.

Some accuse me of having internalised the values and attitudes of the bourgeoisie. But I tell them that I had to escape because it was a matter of life and death. Because my father is 56 and can no longer walk or breathe without a ventilator. Because my brother died at 38 from drinking too much.

You often say it was theatre that saved you, not literature. How so?

It’s always a great challenge for me to talk about the emancipatory role of art in my life. How can I talk about what it is without reproducing this bourgeois mythology about arts that save people and build bridges instead of walls between them, and things like that? All these stupid, mainstream statements are a direct consequence of the bourgeois ideologies to which we are constantly exposed. The question is how to acknowledge the significance of art in lives like ours without reproducing that ideology. I’ve been trying to find a way to get as close to the truth as possible. But the fact remains that I grew up in a family where there were no books and no one read. My father used to say that reading was for girls, but even girls didn’t read. In that world, I was also a gay boy. There was no place for me anywhere. In my early years, I was excluded from society, and like many queer kids in school, I tried to find ways to be loved by others. I joined all the clubs available at school. There was a chess club, so I went there; there was a calligraphy club, and I attended that as well—not because I liked those things, but because I wanted others to like me. Then one day a theatre club became available, and I joined it. For the first time, people looked at me not wanting to destroy me. For the first time in my life, people loved me, clapped at me, smiled at me. The paradox is that theatre saved me, but not because of theatre itself. I didn’t know Bertolt Brecht, I didn’t know Sarah Kane, I didn’t know Racine, but theatre provided me a place where I first felt like I was…

a legitimate person.

Yes, exactly, that I have a body, that I exist. And perhaps the entry cost to the theatre is lower than in literature. It was very difficult to read Proust, Faulkner … Even opera has a very, very high entry cost. The stage, however, is a more open space, which is why I have a particular attachment to it; it is an important part of my life. On a physical level, I am aware of the power of theatre, which can transform you before you even know that it is art or know anything at all about art.

I am constantly afraid. Afraid that I will have to go back home. Despite travelling, having written several books, and enjoying the privilege of working with artists like Thomas Ostermeier and Ken Loach, not a single day goes by without the fear that I will face the fate world intended for me—ending up as a factory worker, doing hard manual labour.

Recently, I had the privilege of seeing Angels in America, a six-hour theatre production.  The production’s long run time made me think about an old a problem: theatre is predominantly occupied by people like you and I also became—those from a class with the cultural capital and enough free time to attend performances. The lower working class, similar to your father in the play Who Killed My Father, is not present. How do you view this problem?

There are two answers. It is important to maintain open space for the avant-garde in the art world. To do things that are complex and not necessarily pleasing to everyone, and that not everyone has access to—not only in terms of class, but also in terms of cultural capital, sexual orientation, and so on. It’s important to keep this space open because it represents a way of going further with trying new things. At the same time, we can strive to change theatre itself, and we can do both simultaneously. Historically, these two efforts have been often seen as two opposing struggles. We can either engage in avant-garde work where we don’t care who attends the performances, as creation itself is what matters, or we are told that we need to get rid of the avant-garde because it’s disconnected from the working class. But both ways of doing it are possible… they’re not mutually exclusive. There is a famous interview with Jean-Paul Sartre where a journalist asks him why the theatre is bourgeois. Why do the bourgeoisie attend theatre? Why has theatre become like a fine glass of wine, something you discuss over a fine dinner, with all your cultural capital and distinction from others…

What was Sartre’s reply?

It was very interesting. He said that theatre is not inherently bourgeois but has become bourgeois. It’s not a story about the history of theatre but rather about a historical theft. The bourgeoisie stole theatre. Sartre says that if we look at the tragedies of the ancient Greeks…

Or even Shakespeare…

Or even Shakespeare—their plays attracted people from very different backgrounds. And they were not easy, simplified performances, but very sophisticated and profound plays. This is a historical process of bourgeois theft. The question is how to undo that, how to reclaim theatre. If theatre is a historical construct, like gender is a social construct, that means we can also deconstruct it. Perhaps the solution is doing something more political, which I’m attempting with Who Killed My Father and which I also strive for in my writing. We further know that Greek and Shakespearean tragedies were extremely political. People would fight, people would scream; those performances were about the present moment and political tensions. We also know that the bourgeoisie gradually excluded politics from art, arguing that political art is less artistic, less serious. After director Thomas Ostermeier and I created Who Killed My Father and debuted in Paris, critics wrote that it was not theatre, but politics.

The use of the term “chosen family” assumes that the only legitimate structure for relationships is familial. Precisely because I am gay, I’ve been very distant from my family from an early age, and I reshaped my life through friendships.

I saw philosopher Didier Eribon in the audience yesterday, proudly filming you. Can your relationship with him, as well as your relationship with philosopher Geoffroy de Lagasnerie, or the relationship between the three of you, be defined as what the LGBTIQ+ community traditionally refers to as a “chosen family”?

Like Didier and Geoffroy, I don’t like the concept of “chosen family”. It involves using familial vocabulary, but what we have is friendship—a completely different invention. The use of the term “chosen family” assumes that the only legitimate structure for relationships is familial. Precisely because I am gay, I’ve been very distant from my family from an early age, and I reshaped my life through friendships. This way of living is entirely outside the conventions of family. We don’t live together, we live each on our own. We share secrets, and we are vulnerable with each other in ways that are impossible within families without being constantly frustrated. We care for each other more than families do. We’ve invented a complete freedom of life that is not rooted in any law or institution. I think we need a new language to describe these relationships. This lack of language is interesting; it speaks of something. We don’t have words for such friendships and therefore have to draw from the familial vocabulary, saying someone is like a brother or sister, or speaking of sisterhood. Our language is contaminated by familial terminology. We know that this lack of language is directly connected to society’s lack of recognition for different kinds of relationships. There is no such thing as marriage for friends, no contracts, no recognition from the state or institutions.

I’ve noticed a similar problem with the lack of language. When I show care and concern for someone, like cooking for them or advising them to wear some warm clothing in bad weather, it is termed as maternal care. I am not a mother.

Yes, we apply familial language to everything, which ruins our possibilities for inventing different kinds of relationships. My friendship with Didier and Geoffroy is not something familial; it’s a political project, a political programme on how to live differently, how to experience life differently, and how to care for one another.

Even more so if such care was absent from our lives initially. What consequences has growing up in the violence of poverty had on you?

There are many consequences. I am constantly afraid. Afraid that I will have to go back home. Despite travelling, having written several books, and enjoying the privilege of working with artists like Thomas Ostermeier and Ken Loach, not a single day goes by without the fear that I will face the fate world intended for me—ending up as a factory worker, doing hard manual labour.  I fear harsh living conditions. Every day, I think I am at risk of returning to what society had previously prepared for me. This fear is evidence of a wound, all the wounds, but also of how much I have changed in the process of escaping the working class.

You can go out on the street and declare that you are gay and demand change. You can say you are a woman and demand change. It’s not going to be easy; you might get persecuted by the police, but at least you have that space. But you can’t go out on the street and say you were humiliated because you laughed the wrong way.

What was this process of change like for you?

I changed my accent and the way I spoke. Because people made fun of me for speaking with a northern dialect like someone from the working class. I got my rotten teeth fixed because people were mocking me for that. I changed my laugh because in high school and during my studies, I was told that I laughed too loudly. But in the working class, you express your emotions, you laugh so hard you might fall on your back; laughter in the working class is very physical. For example, in French, we have an expression for laughing so hard you  twist your body from laughing. Every language has expressions for such physical laughter. But as I said, I had to change my laugh. I also had to change my perception of the world. I had to read books I had never read before, which was extremely difficult. And everything you change about yourself—and you change it because of the humiliations you endured—leaves a mark on you. What I want to do with my writing, and I am certainly not alone in this, is to create space for these wounds. Because these wounds do not have a political space. You can go out on the street and declare that you are gay and demand change. You can say you are a woman and demand change. It’s not going to be easy; you might get persecuted by the police, but at least you have that space. But you can’t go out on the street and say you were humiliated because you laughed the wrong way.

Édouard Louis in Who Killed My Father at Schaubühne theatre in Berlin; photo: Jean Louis Fernandez.

Some critics accuse you of having betrayed the working class with all the changes you’ve undergone, claiming that you have adopted the values and culture of the bourgeoisie.

The reason for the changes is not that I think the bourgeoisie are better. It’s not about choosing between two classes and legitimising the dominant class through that choice. It’s about survival. That’s why I changed. Yes, some accuse me of having internalised the values and attitudes of the bourgeoisie. But I tell them that I had to escape because it was a matter of life and death. Because my father is 56 and can no longer walk or breathe without a ventilator. Because my brother died at 38 from drinking too much. Because my cousin died in prison. The issue of class is a matter of life and death. It’s not a symbolic or aesthetic question of lifestyle choices. You change because you have to. And when you become a sort of trans-class, such accusations and questions follow, and they are problematic. They are posed as if class were not material, as if it were not about the body, as if it were just a symbolic issue, but it’s not.

If my mother or brother wanted to speak, no one would listen to them because they lack the appropriate language. They would be cancelled.

It’s equally problematic when identity politics impose the rule of authenticity, claiming that you only have the right to an opinion on workers’ issues if you’ve remained in the lower working class. This can be a tool for silencing. Those who have stayed where they were most likely don’t have access to the public sphere.

Absolutely, absolutely. It also reflects sociological naivety, as the reason I can speak about working-class people and confront the dominant class with workers’ lives, pain, and problems is precisely that I have the tools inherent of that class. If my mother or brother wanted to speak, no one would listen to them because they lack the appropriate language. They would be cancelled. We can’t just say that we need to create a system where everyone is heard, because it’s not just a matter of decision. The consequence of social violence is that my mother and brother are not only deprived of language and expressive tools but also of the tools to understand what they are going through, so they cannot fight against it. I fight against injustices through writing; I have written two books about my mother. She told me how my father confined her at home, demanding that she cook, raise the children, clean the house, and keep her mouth shut. One day, I told her I was so sorry that men in our society treat women like that. She said, oh, no, it’s not about men and women but about your father being a moody person. Since my mother has not read Simone de Beauvoir or Angela Davis, she is missing the keys to understanding what she is going through. So, to escape your background, you also need the tools to understand your own experience, which working-class people are deprived of.  The whole situation is much more complex than described by those who come to lecture you about having betrayed working-class people. About having abandoned them.

I’d like to return to the question of being trans-class, as you call it. The famous psychologist David Smail wrote about feelings of identity disintegration that occur precisely among those who move from lower to higher social classes, as they lack any support in the knowledge of their own worth. For example: how do you know you are intelligent if your parents never had the opportunity to become intellectuals? Consequently, there are sometimes repetitions of old feelings of being “good for nothing,” etc. Are you familiar with this?

Yes, of course, because, as we know, changing social class means you no longer belong to the world you came from, nor to the world you have now entered, so you are in a constant state of not belonging. You are like a migrant, a displaced person. The consequences are painful and difficult to express. But since you are now in a more privileged situation—not better, but your life is easier —you will be accused of complaining if you express your pain or melancholy. Whereas, when the bourgeoisie expresses melancholy, we call it poetry. Melancholy is then seen as something romantic and good, it’s an entire literary movement. So, it is also a political question of who has access to melancholy. Similarly, oppressed women do not have the same access to melancholy as men or children. Men can go crazy, go to the bar, or cheat on their wives. Children refuse to go to school and to obey authority. But we always expect mothers to be the ones who hold everything together, who are always smiling, who bring people together. There is thus a parallel between women and trans-class individuals.

It’s similar with anger. If a woman gets angry, she might end up beaten or excluded. But when a man gets angry, of course in public, it’s seen as a political stance and he is a flagbearer for free speech. If you’re an undocumented migrant or asylum seeker, you also can’t afford to get angry, because you might be deported.

Yes, a migrant without papers will also be told that they are not entitled to anger because they are here now. It’s about unequal access to emotions, exactly that. But even though these positions are difficult, we must also see them as opportunities for greater lucidity, for a clearer vision of the world.

There is sometimes a clash between my attitude and that of the bourgeoisie. It’s easy for them to reject what society gave them. I, however, want to steal that which society never gave me.

Displacement is also intellectually stimulating.

Yes, it is a privilege to have the opportunity to understand that our errors in thinking are rooted in the ideologies we are exposed to every day. All this ideology about class, meritocracy, effort, and success… Escaping one’s class, contrary to what we are led to believe, is not proof that escape is possible. It’s the opposite—it shows how impossible it is, because we know just how many people we left behind, how many people we saw growing up who worked hard, who were intelligent, but still got nowhere and were not given access to anything because they were from the working class. Being trans-class means having insight into the falseness of all the mythologies we hear about every day.

People who are socially displaced for any reason have insights that condemn them to remaining mere observers of society, as they can no longer fully belong to any segment of it—they are aware of false constructs and ideologies. The luckier among them become writers, artists, philosophers, etc. In other words, those who describe and comment on society from the outside.

True, but there are various experiences of outsideness. When I arrived in Paris to study philosophy at a prestigious university, I was struck by how many children of the bourgeoisie wanted to leave these institutions. They considered such sentiment as alternative or underground. They were born with access to these institutions. For them, being outside meant stepping away from the establishments society had granted them. They frequented the Odéon, the Comédie Française, the Sorbonne… the largest institutions. I, on the other hand, was deprived of access to these, as was my family. For me, the subversive thing was to get into these institutions and tell my own stories. That is why I’m performing at Charles Bruner, that is why I’m performing at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris. I want to enter spaces where my body is not supposed to be. Hence, there is sometimes a clash between my attitude and that of the bourgeoisie. It’s easy for them to reject what society gave them. I, however, want to steal that which society never gave me. Our paths, our missions are extremely different. I don’t want to be in the alternative, I want to be in the centre. I was forced to be alternative as a child.

It’s important that questions of identity not be hijacked by the dominant class with the intent of turning them into something symbolic, completely severing the connection with political movements, with political issues. We end up with a politics of language, where language becomes merely a surface instead of a tool and a path to something radical.

Has being trans-class also shaped how you view the issues of identity politics? Recently, you publicly posted an answer to a theatre director, later translated into several languages, who asked if he could create a play based on your work since he himself is not gay. You responded that identity is not private property and thus you do not own gayness. Also, years ago, in a conversation with writer Zadie Smith, you said this: “I prefer Pierre Bourdieu talking about women more than Margaret Thatcher.”

(Laughter that isn’t very loud, but lasts.)

A witty remark about Margaret Thatcher, indeed. So, who, within the culture of tolerance, or identity politics, is entitled to speak?

I often question the border between politics and identity politics because I don’t see identity politics as issues of identity, but as class struggle. I see it as a matter of life and death. If you are a woman, a man can kill you. In France, every other day a man kills a woman, not to mention physical abuse that does not result in death. If you are gay, you are five to six times more likely to commit suicide in childhood. If you are black or Arabic, the police might kill you. When people talk about identity politics, they pretend that questions of gender, race, etc. are entirely symbolic and have nothing to do with real issues of wages, welfare, or social security. The problem is in the definition of identity politics because these identities are not just identities but are, as I also say in Who Killed My Father, synonyms for premature exposure to death. At the same time, it’s important that questions of identity not be hijacked by the dominant class with the intent of turning them into something symbolic, completely severing the connection with political movements, with political issues. During my lectures in America, I often witnessed how people within the academic context talk about sexuality, about homosexuality. Completely detached from real political issues. The question is how to radicalise identity politics again. How to avoid pitting class against identity, as people constantly do. Traditional leftist movements have for decades denied the right to speak about women’s rights, about queer rights. The French communist party used to say that homosexuality was a bourgeois deviance. Today, we have people talking about sexuality or gender, but they don’t care about class. In my work, I try to address all these issues and make them as radical as possible. I try to view identity through class or as a combination of both. Sometimes it can also be about a different question within a specific topic. For example, if we ask ourselves what it means to be lesbian or gay in the context of domestic violence, the issue is trans-class, as we will encounter the same problems across a range of social classes. Again, it’s about finding a language that includes all classes in these discussions, so they develop into something radical in terms of their potential for transformation.

What is called aesthetic rules are actually class rules. One of these rules is that you must not be too political. But if my writing does not contain politics, then I am not talking about the working class.

You keep returning to the problem of language, so let’s define it as precisely as possible. Especially since it often seems that the left has little left but the way language is used. That and perhaps minor social reforms. And of course, general correctness and inclusivity, which politicians from all spectrums so easily exploit to their benefit. A politician who outwardly appears inclusive and tolerant, using the right language, consequently doesn’t have to put in the actual work, which should primarily be about ensuring socioeconomic equality. All this performative inclusion, accompanied by the correct language, often comes too late—when someone from the margins has already “made it”. Their inclusion usually has no real socioeconomic impact on the majority of people who remain on the margins.

When I said that we need to invent a language that would make these political issues radical again, I meant that we need to use language as a pathway to radicalism, not that the current language itself is radical. The current problem is exactly what you’re saying, that everything remains at the superficial level of using the right language. It makes me think of Camila Sosa Villada, an Argentine trans writer, who recently wrote a very radical and powerful essay in which she says that, while people in academia debate whether to say trans person or transsexual or transvestite, we are being killed in the suburbs of Buenos Aires. I’m not saying that the question of language use isn’t legitimate, as words do hurt. When I was called a faggot as a child, it caused me immense pain. I’m not denying that. But what happens when all political movements suddenly become just a matter of language? Suddenly, we have brands and large corporations addressing queer people, blah blah blah, but doing nothing. We end up with a politics of language, where language becomes merely a surface instead of a tool and a path to something radical. This is a historical process of depoliticization, as we see fewer and fewer unions, fewer and fewer activists in political parties. In Europe, for example, we see that there are more and more people in politics who have been trained in schools and colleges specifically on how to make politics.

On how to “make politics”, interesting.

Yes, for them, it’s a profession. Whereas in the past, people were first involved in unions and fights, and they learned about politics and becoming a politician through such activism, while studying. There is therefore also a historical shift in politics, which explains why some people become entangled in these symbolic problems. It’s because they have no connection to the physical aspect of politics.

That’s the best-case scenario. The worst case is that they don’t have any actual interest in things changing towards a socially and economically just society.

Yes, exactly. Because they are living a good life.

Reading your books, as well as the books of Didier Eribon, Annie Ernaux, and others, I began to notice that those of us coming from unstable backgrounds also write in an unstable manner. We shift and blend genres, and the first-person narrator changes perspectives or to whom he or she speaks. Often, the books are also comparatively short, as we are not accustomed to taking up all the space in the world to express ourselves, etc.

Yeah. I also find it interesting to consider to what extent those of us coming from working-class backgrounds adjust our writing to established norms. When I started writing, I felt the pressure of a whole set of rules and norms that dictate what it means to write. Similar to the rules and norms of gender that discipline your body every day and tell you how you must behave in a certain way. I realised that these rules, which are supposed to define in aesthetic terms what it means to write a beautiful book, and what it means to create a piece of art, historically came from writers of the dominant class. What is called aesthetic rules are actually class rules. One of these rules is that you must not be too political. But if my writing does not contain politics, then I am not talking about the working class.

In A Woman’s Battles and Transformations, you write about your mother and say: “Because I know now that what is called literature has been constructed against lives and bodies like my mother’s. Because I know, from here on, that to write about her, and to write about her life, is to write against literature.” The dominant class has also determined what constitutes the canon.

Of course I’m not rejecting the canon, they’ve created masterpieces. I’m glad that these rules were established. But we must constantly change the rules, because the working class is no longer what it was in the time of Émile Zola or Victor Hugo. But now I’m thinking about something you said earlier, that even the question of form is political, since everyone would be happy if we wrote about the working class in a traditional manner within a traditional novel, rather than in the first-person singular. So sometimes form is more political than content.

When you talk about artists who have inspired your own liberation and provided you with a method for your writing, you talk about a “chain of empowerment”. How does this chain work?

I escaped and began writing because I heard stories of others who had escaped and wrote about it. Escapes allow for more escapes. If not that, then they at least afford others the possibility of imagining them. I started portraying the experiences of the working class because others had already done so. For example, Jean-Luc Lagarce in theatre, Didier Eribon, Annie Ernaux in literature, Pierre Bourdieu in theory, Ken Loach and the Dardenne brothers in film…

In your first book about your mother, the previously mentioned A Woman’s Battles and Transformations, you write about her liberation from an abusive husband. You reference the writer Peter Handke, who also wrote about his mother, though her life ended in suicide. Why did Handke’s mother end up worse than yours?

(A long pause)

Since we don’t have much time left, we can skip Handke. 

No, I’m thinking about it. It’s beautiful. It’s complicated. Perhaps because Handke’s mother didn’t have a gay son. Yeah, I think that plays a role. Many gay men end up taking care of their mothers because they have experienced masculine violence similar to that experienced by women and we understand what it means.

Handke didn’t understand any of this. He was buying his mother kitchen appliances, just like your father was buying them for your mother. This only resulted in Handke’s mother not knowing what to do with her free hands.

No, he didn’t understand. My books about my mother are, in their own way, also part of the history of art, which creates an interconnection between women and gay men, as seen in the films of Pedro Almodóvar, Xavier Dolan, or Gus Van Sant—gay filmmakers who have made most of their films about women. There are also artists like Nan Goldin, who photographed her gay friends, and Patti Smith, who wrote about her friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe. There is a history of convergence between gay bodies and female bodies because they have suffered through the same thing.

Sometimes the problem is understanding something as a problem. Within friendship, we can create a space where we don’t care about certain things, certain issues, but it allows us to care about the things that are better for us.

Your second book about your mother, titled Monique s’évade (Monique Gets Away), has recently been published in France. It turns out that she ended up in another abusive relationship, a fact she hid from you. What are Monique’s chances of truly changing and transforming?

It takes time. When I was a child, the fact that we both suffered from the same violence drove us apart. Because this same masculine violence taught my mother that gay people are disgusting and taught me that women are inferior. It takes time to understand how these dynamics really work and to let new findings set in.

The writer Aleksandar Hemon says that home is where we don’t need to explain ourselves. Do you have a home in this sense?

(A slight pause) Yes, I have a home. It’s in friendship. It’s a place where explanations are not necessary, where you do away with certain questions. When I was a child, my father constantly told me that I acted like a girl, like a pussy, and when I escaped, at some point I wondered—why didn’t he love me? What personal issue was that about? But when I started creating a new life with friends, I no longer cared because I had them. I didn’t care whether that man loved me or not. I see many people in their thirties, forties, fifties still going to therapists to understand what was wrong with their parents. Friendship is also a way of…

…healing the wounds?

Not even healing. It’s more like skipping over something. Some problems. Because sometimes the problem is understanding something as a problem. Within friendship, we can create a space where we don’t care about certain things, certain issues, but it allows us to care about the things that are better for us. It’s precisely not about healing, because sometimes, when you try to heal from things, you become trapped by them. But you also can’t just decide to magically skip over your traumas. You need to find a space where it’s possible for you to deal with them on your own terms.

A space where it’s less important if you’re gay, for example.

Yeah, or it becomes important in a different way, it becomes a matter of happiness and not a matter of questions anymore.

I’m also out of questions. If I may, I would like to tell you something. I think talent starts with the ability to be compassionate. And you have this amazing ability to be compassionate to the people who hurt you the most. So, you have talent in abundance.  I wish you all the love and recognition in the world.

Thank you so much. You were wonderful. This was such a beautiful conversation. Thank you.

This interview was first published in a special 2024 issue of Mladina’s Interviews. Nina Hlebec transcribed and translated the version for Disenz, which was then proofread by Josh Rocchio.